Direct Mail & Postcard Marketing Tips

Direct mail and postcard marketing is the best way to get a guaranteed moment to introduce your lawn care business to potential customers. While other types of advertising can miss your customers entirely, a postcard will be in their stack of mail and ensure a brief moment of consideration with your target prospect. This moment can last as little as 1 second, so it is vitally important your direct mail postcard is designed in a way that has “attention grabbing power.”

The three most common reasons postcards will not or have not worked for you are:

1. You do not target your model prospect
2. You do not communicate effectively
3. You give up too early

Consider the following elements to increase the selling power of your lawn care direct mail and postcard marketing program:

Purpose

1. The purpose of a well-designed direct mail postcard is to make a very quick and powerful impression, compelling prospects to contact and/or purchase products or services from your company.
2. It can take numerous impressions to get the recognition required for your customer to contact you, so this marketing approach is designed to be repeated often to maximize results.
3. To get the best response to your mailing, you want to make sure your postcards are targeted demographically, being received by the prospects that are the most likely to buy your service or product.

Design

Here are 7 attributes of lawn care direct mail postcard designs that result in sales success:

1. The “Attention Grabber”- Keep in mind that you only have seconds to get attention. Relevant headlines and images with stopping power is the key to separate your postcard from everything else in the mailbox. You should think of the front of your postcard like a billboard. Be specific, compelling, and relevant with your headline and image.
2. Keep It Simple- Write simply about what the product or service will do for them. Answer the question, “how will it make my life better?” Focus your information on benefits. Point out how you differentiate whenever possible.
3. Compelling Offer- It has been proven that you will have a far greater return on investment when you have a call to action on your direct mail postcard. Discounts, coupons, referral programs and other incentives will create real interest while improving your return.
4. Call To Action – make the call to action prominent. It is best to offer a combination of contacts such as phone, website, etc.
5. Design – Be sure to leave plenty of white space to give the eye an opportunity to rest. A pleasing design will allow the readers eye to move from the headline down to the call to action.
6. 2-Sided- Use the back side of your postcard for valuable printing real estate. With this extra area you can describe the benefits of your product in more detail. Consider using only black and white text on the back side. Full color on both sides can be confusing and distract the eye from the main message on the front.
7. Quality- Having a full color postcard on quality gloss paper stock will increase consumer confidence that you are a quality company with whom to deal.

Target Audience

Now that you have created the perfect postcard, getting it in the hands of your target audience is just as important. As with any lawn care marketing effort, you will want to research your target audience. Demographics such as location, age, gender, income, homeowner/renter, etc., are all factors in determining who is most likely to purchase your product. Be sure to start with geographical areas and prospects that are most likely to purchase what you are selling.

You know your business better than anyone, so the best question you can ask yourself is “Who are my customers? What do they look like?” Make a list of demographic attributes common to your customers.

Mailing Lists

Consider to whom you are going to mail the postcards. Here are the following lawn care postcard marketing mailing options to get the best results:

1. Current Customer List- This one is the easiest. Always keep up with this list and make sure you have current information about each of your customers. Make sure to offer these customers loyalty discounts, or special offers to reactivate purchases from the people who already have trust in your product.
2. Saturation Mailing List- This method involves mailing a postcard to every house in a zip code. Be sure that your product/service is something that has broader appeal and might result in a sale at each house. Good example: Pizza Delivery. Bad example: Pre-schooling.
3. Targeted Mailing List- This list allows you to enter very specific demographics to target very specific audiences. Examples of demographics can be age, gender, income, homeowner/renter, buying habits, children present, etc. This type of list maximizes efficiency because it allows you to mail specifically to your audience and not waste postage and printing on postcards that would go to people who are not shopping for your product or service.
4. New Homeowner- One of the better lists with higher return is the “new home owner” list – especially if your product or service relate to home ownership. You can use this to be the first to advertise to new potential customers in your area.

Measure Results

Be sure to track your results and ask customers how they heard about your company. Every mailing is not ultimately successful, but the data you get from them and what you learn is. It often takes multiple mailings to come up with a formula and design that gets positive results.

Done correctly, direct mail postcard marketing is an excellent way to grow your lawn care business. Just remember to target the right people and repeat, repeat, and repeat.